Items

• "Governor Cuomo Visits LaGuardia CC's Program for the Deaf"

  This article published in a CUNY-wide bulletin describes a visit by then-governor Mario Cuomo to LaGuardia's program for Deaf adults. Recognizing the success of the program, the governor pledged $125,000 in funding for the coming year.
• LaGuardia Community College Division of Continuing Education: General Statement

  This undated document details the accomplishments of the Division of Continuing Education at LaGuardia Community College. The division's programs were designed to provide access to higher education for nontraditional learners and to respond to the needs of the community in which the college was situated. To this end, the division undertook programs to reach deaf learners, immigrants learning English for the first time, senior citizens, homeless adults, and incarcerated persons.
• LaGuardia Works: LaGuardia Community College, the First 25 Years

  This booklet, published in 1997, tells the story of the first 25 years of LaGuardia Community College, from its conception as "Community College Number Nine" in 1968 through its 1971 opening and beyond. The author describes the social and economic context in which LaGuardia emerged, at a time when the City University aimed to make itself available to ever-larger segments of the population, while at the same time New York City endured an economic restructuring that deeply affected neighborhoods like Long Island City, in which the new college was situated. The booklet goes on to describe LaGuardia's distinct circumstances, including its location in a former factory building and the recruitment of an activist faculty and staff who were given free rein by an open-minded administration to create novel programs that would both utilize the city as a site of learning and expand access to higher education to heretofore underserved populations.
• Division of Continuing Education: Annual Report, 1979-80

  The Division of Continuing Education at LaGuardia Community College produced this Annual Report for 1979-80. It describes the Division's accomplishments, and the range of programs aimed at the diverse communities served by the college, and makes the case for an urban community college that identifies and responds to the specific needs of the neighborhoods in which it is situated.
• "Education for Deaf Students at LaGuardia Community College"

  This article from the CUNY Research Foundation's Annual Report of 1985 highlights the achievements of LaGuardia's programs for Deaf students.
• "A Community College Examines Its Community"

  This article penned by Fern Khan examines LaGuardia Community College's efforts "to become more responsive to the varied needs of its community." This project consisted of an in-depth examination of social and economic characteristics of the neighborhoods served by the college and the establishment of channels of communication that would enable the college to develop its programs with input from members of the community it serves.
• "Ready to Learn, Ready to Work"

  This City Limits article from 1986 describes LaGuardia Community College's program for homeless women in New York City.
• Slam! High School Organizing Program: Youth Rising

  This publication was created by SLAM! to showcase poetry by the high school students in the SLAM! High School Organizing Program's creative writing workshop. The students learned poetry writing skills and discussed issues of police abuse, racial profiling, and violence in their communities, then wrote poems about the subject.
• Director of Security's Resignation Letter, York College

  York College Director of Security Winston A. Burrows' resignation letter explains that he is resigning after 17 years of service at York because he cannot become a party to the City University Director of Public Safety's plan to deny students their constitutional right to free speech. The letter details the CUNY chancellor's efforts to prevent students from bringing in the speaker of their choice on Black Solidarity Day.
• "Correcting Papers: The CUNY Protest You Didn't Hear About"

  Esther Kaplan and Alisa Solomon of The Village Voice critique other newspapers' reports of the March 23, 1995 CUNY Coalition protest: "A tale of 'angry and violent' students? Village Voice reporters witnessed a different story: police so out of control that even a captain tackled and choked a reporter."
• Protestors Take Stand Against CUNY Hikes

  This September 2008 cover story in The Paper, CCNY's newspaper for people of African descent, reports on a demonstration against budget cuts and a tuition hike to CUNY.
• "Taught" by Marie Jean Lederman, 1973

  In this piece of narrative nonfiction, Baruch College Professor Marie Jean Lederman reflects on her experience teaching remedial Freshman English at the University Center SEEK in the late 1960s.
• Ann Reynolds #1 Enemy of CUNY

  This black and white flier has a picture of Wynetka "Ann" Reynolds, chancellor of CUNY. Activists chose the chancellor as a target to draw attention to their struggle for access to CUNY and quality public education.
• Student Power Movement, No Cops

  This flier produced by the Student Power Movement urges students to resist the increased police presence in schools, on CUNY campuses, and in NYC communities.
• Spheric: Red, White and Blues

  This issue of Spheric, a Hunter College newspaper produced by activists from the CUNY Coalition, includes a "special bulletin" that details proposed CUNY budget cuts and tuition increases as well as the efforts undertaken by the Students Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) to oppose the plans. Other student contributions to the paper include lengthy opinion pieces, poetry, and satire.
• Spheric: Election Special

  This special edition of Spheric, a Hunter College newspaper produced by activists from the CUNY Coalition, includes several articles covering the 1996 U.S. presidential election alongside critiques of the nation's political system. It also features student-submitted poetry, artwork, book reviews, and other articles focused on social justice.
• Spheric: "Birth of an Internation," Vol. X: #1, 1995

  This issue of Spheric, a Hunter College newspaper produced by activists from the CUNY Coalition, covers the massive March 23, 1995 protest at City Hall that led to the reduction of Governor Pataki's budget cuts and tuition hike that year. Includes stunning original photos, analysis by participants with opposing viewpoints, and popular education to encourage students to explore issues of racial and gender injustice.
• "Move the Crowd"

  This November 2000 feature article in The Source, the leading national hip-hop magazine at the time, covers SLAM!'s participation in organizing protests against the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia that year. The protests focused on mass imprisonment, the death penalty, and police brutality.
• SLAM! the Tuition Hike Flier

  Students posted this flier in the hallways of their CUNY campuses across the city, as part of efforts to build and maintain SLAM! chapters at other campuses in addition to Hunter College.
• SLAM! Student Meeting Flier

  This flier was created by Brooklyn College SLAM! members to promote a meeting on campus to organize protests against a CUNY tuition hike in the spring semester of 1997.
• SLAM! Structure

  This flier explains the structure of city-wide SLAM!, which was designed to ensure representation of actual organizing by students on their campuses. This was an effort to build a grassroots coalition that would bypass some of the problems the CUNY Coalition had in 1995 with multiple newspaper-pushing party organizations that weren't doing organizing work on any campus.
• Do You and Your Friends Want to Go to College?

  This flier was created by SLAM!'s High School Organizing Committee in 1999 to attempt to recruit high school students to organize to save open admissions at CUNY. Members of the committee passed out these fliers in the morning before school outside Manhattan high schools and asked high school students about their concerns related to access to CUNY.
• SLAM! business card

  This business card was created to promote SLAM! and make sure people had the phone number and address. It featured a well-designed colorful graphic, a Frederick Douglass quote, and a tagline sharing SLAM!'s mission, "To serve the people."
• SLAM! Program Working Document

  SLAM!'s 10-Point Program outlines the organization's vision for transformation of the university and society, from access for all to free quality higher education to democratic governance by students, workers and faculty; education for liberation; campus security under democratic control; and a new society that would be truly democratic and meet the basic needs of all people.
• Shut The City Down flier

  Original flier used to publicize and invite CUNY and high school students to the March 23, 1995 rally at City Hall and the unpermitted march on Wall Street planned for after the rally. Included here is a separate document that was distributed among some activists: a photocopied map of the financial district that names the offices of banks, stock exchanges and other global financial centers.